Mohamed Salah Welcomes Son Leil Amid Career Changes
Mohamed Salah has slipped quietly back into Liverpool, not for a transfer twist or a farewell lap of honour, but for something far more personal. His wife has given birth to their third child – and their first son – in the city that became their second home.
The boy’s name is Leil, revealed by Salah’s sister Rabab on social media. In Arabic, it means “night” – short, simple, and loaded with poetry. A new chapter, with a name that sounds like calm after chaos.
Salah, now 34, officially drew a line under his Liverpool career in the summer when he and the club agreed to terminate his contract a year early. He had signed a two-year deal in 2025, only for both parties to walk away 12 months ahead of schedule. The plan, at one stage, was to stay on Merseyside for another season. Life, as it often does, moved quicker than the paperwork.
He chose Turkey for the next step, joining Trabzonspor, but his family story remains tied to the north west of England. Nearly a decade in Liverpool has left a mark on the Egyptian and those closest to him. The city is where his daughters grew up, where the family settled, where anonymity was impossible but affection was constant.
His wife, Magi, has been there from the very start. They grew up together in Nagrig, his hometown in Egypt. She later trained as a biotechnician, but to most football fans she is the figure who has stood quietly beside him through every phase of his rise. The pair married in 2013, just as his European journey was taking off.
Their first daughter, Makka, was born in 2014, at the dawn of his ascent to stardom. Kayan followed in 2020, during Salah’s peak years at Liverpool, when his goals and celebrations became stitched into the fabric of Anfield. Now comes Leil, the first son, born back in the city they still call home in spirit, if not in contract.
Trabzonspor president Ertugrul Dogan confirmed the new arrival and revealed that Salah is not the only big name at the club celebrating. Speaking to 61saat, Dogan said: “After the (Amed SK) match, I travelled abroad with Salah and Andre Onana. Both of them had new children, Onana had twins and Salah a baby boy. I congratulate their families and their wives.”
So while Salah wrestles with the demands of a new league and a new dressing room, he is also juggling the familiar chaos of a newborn. The timing has not been gentle. His early weeks in Turkey have already been turbulent, marked by a bruising Europa League exit and a change in the dugout.
Trabzonspor’s 5-0 aggregate defeat to Ferencvaros in the Europa League play-offs cost head coach Fatih Tekke his job, a harsh reminder that expectations at the club bite hard. Salah walked into a project that spoke of ambition and long-term planning, only to see the first major pillar – the manager – fall before the season had properly settled.
He responded not with silence but with a pointed message on social media, one that sounded like a man digging in, not backing away.
“Nothing in my career ever came easy. Bad nights and disappointments are part of football, and I have learned to turn them into motivation and into trophies. Trabzonspor is my club, and I am part of this project, body and soul. Last night will not change that. I know expectations are high, and I truly believe we can and will deliver. ‘I came here to win’ is not just a slogan to me.”
Those words read differently now, with a newborn in the picture and a family straddling two worlds – the quiet streets around Liverpool they know so well and the passionate football cauldron of Trabzon. Salah has long spoken about how rooted his family felt on Merseyside, how reluctant they were to let go.
“They feel at home [here],” he said previously of Liverpool. “They were very happy, [wife] Magi and the kids, they were very happy that we're staying another two years. It feels like home so everyone was happy.”
That contract never ran its course. Yet when it came to welcoming their son, the Salah family chose familiarity. The same city. The same surroundings. A place where the forward’s goals, celebrations and charitable work turned him into something more than just a visiting superstar.
Now, as Leil arrives into a life split between Nagrig, Liverpool and Trabzon, his father stands at another crossroads in his career. The Premier League chapter is closed, the Turkish adventure has started roughly, and the expectations remain sky high.
Salah has framed it simply: he came to Trabzonspor to win. With a newborn son bearing a name that means “night”, the question is whether the next phase of his career will bring the kind of dawn he has always managed to find after the darkest results.
